[70] The Reader, no doubt, feels a great pleasure in seeing the subject of pious flagellations among Christians again introduced, and a fresh Chapter begun upon it: indeed the Author had taken a great liberty, in losing sight of his main subject for so long a time, and dwelling, through so many pages, upon the flagellatory corrections which, after the example of Convents, were, in not very remote days, practised in the Palaces of the Great: his zeal in the defence of Friars and Nuns has insensibly carried him these lengths.
In the present Chapter, the Author has also indulged himself in a piece of great freedom with the Abbé Boileau, his original, or rather his model: which is no less than to have given a direct contradiction to the main doctrine advanced by the Abbé in his Work.
Thus, the principal, or rather sole point, which the Abbé labours to prove in his Book, is, that voluntary flagellations only began to be practised among Christians, in the years 1047 or 1056; this is an assertion which he introduces almost at every page, and which expressly constitutes the title of one of his Chapters (the 7th): yet he has himself quoted (without disputing the truth of them) several facts that shew such practice to have been much older: I have therefore taken the liberty, in the present Chapter, in which those facts are collected, to dissent from the doctrine maintained by him, and have advanced, that voluntary flagellations were practised in early times among Christians, though they began to be universally admitted only in the years 1047 and 1056.
And indeed if the Reader now asked my own opinion concerning the antiquity, or novelty, of the practice in question, a subject which has caused much disputation among Catholic Divines, I would answer, that I do not think it in the least probable, that a practice like this, after having been unknown for so many Centuries, should afterwards have been thought of on a sudden, and then adopted by the whole Christian world, at the same period.
In the first place it is to be observed, that though the strict truth of those early instances of voluntary flagellations, which are to be found in the Abbé’s text, might perhaps be controverted, yet, as the reader will see, such instances are related by early and contemporary Writers, as common facts, at which they do not express any surprise.
In the second place, since the opposers of the opinion of the antiquity of self-flagellations admit, that cruel voluntary penances, such as wearing iron cuirasses inwardly armed with points, being continually loaded with enormous weights, dwelling in the bottom of dwells, or on the tops of columns, were practised by the first Christians, it is difficult to understand why they make such objections against flagellations in particular, which they agree to have been employed, from the earliest times, by Ecclesiastical Superiors, as common methods of correcting offences of a religious kind, and which were likewise used for pious purposes, before the establishment of Christianity.
Nay, beating and lashing one’s self, are means of self-mortification, which, more readily than any other, occur to the minds either of superstitious, or hypocritical persons. Practices of this kind presently gratify the sudden fits of fanaticism of the one, and serve extremely well the purposes of the other, in that they catch the minds of the vulgar, by the display of an apparatus of cruel instruments and a show of great severity, at the same time that they are in reality much less difficult to be borne than the penances above alluded to, and want what constituted the most intolerable hardship of these latter, diuturnity and uninterruption.
Besides, those who make self-flagellation part of their religious exercises, always have it in their power to take, like Sancho, their own time for performing them, as well as to choose what station they please for that purpose. In Summer, they may settle themselves in a cool place; in Winter, near a good fire; and have constantly by them some excellent liquor, to refresh themselves with, during the different pauses they think proper to make.
They may moreover use just what degree of severity they choose. They even may, like Sancho, who only lashed the trees around him, or like the Hermit mentioned by La Fontaine, content themselves with flagellating the walls of their apartment: nay, they may perform no flagellation at all, and yet make afterwards what boast they please. Having duly weighed all the above important considerations, as well as the facts quoted by the Abbé, the truth of which he does not take the trouble to deny, I have ventured to dissent from his inconsistent assertions, and have made the abovementioned change in his doctrine.
[71] The above fact related by Theodoret is very positive; and it supplies an evident proof, that the practice of self-flagellation was not unknown in the times of that early Writer: the silence of the same Author in other parts of his Writings, concerning the practice in question, shews nothing more, except that the same was not universally adopted in his time, as hath been observed in the Note, pag. 124 of this Work.